THE LANCASHIRE GEOMETERS AND THEIR WRITINGS. 



129 



beginning of the present century. The names of Edwards, 

 Gompertz, Hampshire, and Sanderson, suffice to show that 

 the same spirit animated the operatives of Spitalfields which 

 had ah-eady roused the hand-loom weavers of Lancashire to 

 profitable action, whilst the fact of Mr. John Fletcher, a 

 journeyman hatter, being at times a member both of the 

 London and Oldham Societies,* connects the metropolitan 

 with the provincial, and furnishes an instance of the means by 

 which one Society could profit by the objects and designs of 

 another, much more readily than by waiting for their uncertain 

 development in the pages of the Mathematical periodicals. 



During the same period, Mr. John Ryley, of Leeds, the 

 "Rylando,'' the " Ferdinando" and the "Mr. Brookes" of the 

 periodicals, laid the foundation of what Professor Davies not 

 unaptly terms the " Yorkshire School of Geometers," (Notes 

 and Queries, No. 57,) and more than ordinarily succeeded in 

 dififusing a love for pure Geometry amongst the operatives 

 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, which has since extended 

 itself northwards, and found a genial home amongst the 

 miners and engineers of Northumberland and the borders of 

 Scotland. It is a singular circumstance that most of the ablest 

 academic and non-academic Mathematicians and Philosophers 

 of our times are natives of the North. Whewell, Sedgwick, 

 Rutherford, Woolhouse, Fenwick, Tate, Hodgkinson, Finlay, 

 (Dunelmensis,) Weddle, Elliott, Hann, Harley, Rawson, 

 Whitley, Beecroft, Buckley, Tebay, and many others may 

 be cited in proof of the assertion; and the fact has so 

 frequently forced itself upon the attention of even casual 



* Mr. Fletcher was admitted a member of the " Mathematical Society of 

 Spitalfields," October 10th, 1795, as appears by the Minutes of the Society, now 

 in the possession of the Royal Astronomical Society, and from which Mr. Williams, 

 the Assistant Secretary, has kindly furnished me with an extract. Mr. Ogden, 

 the present Secretary of the Oldham Society, also hiforms me that Mr. Fletcher 

 became a member of that Society in 1803. His letters to Mr, Wolfenden, quoted 

 in my Memoir, show that he always kept up an active correspondence with his 

 Lancashire friends. 



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